Leviathan and Its Enemies Quotes

“Not only the media of mass communication, one of the most important instruments by which the managerial elite disciplines and control the mass population, but also all other mass organizations that disseminate, restrict, or invent information, ideas and values advertising, publishing, journalism, film and broadcasting, entertainment, religion, education, and institutions for research and development. Indeed, the mass organizations of culture and communication, which generally lack the coercive disciplines of the mass corporation and the mass state, are able to provide disciplines and control for the mass population primarily through their use of the devices and techniques of mass communication. All the mass cultural organizations, then, function as part of the media of mass communication, and they constitute a necessary element in the power base of the managerial elite.”
― Samuel T. Francis, Leviathan and Its Enemies: Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America

“The formal mechanisms of mass liberal democracy – regular elections, competing political parties, universal suffrage, and legal and political rights – do not significantly mitigate the monolithic and uniform concentration of managerial power. The “despotism” of the regime – its tendency toward the monopolization of political, economic, and cultural power by a single social and political force of managerial and technical skills and the expansive, uniform, and centralized nature of its power – is a direct consequence of the contracted composition of the lite and the restriction of its membership to element proficient in managerial and technical skills. The narrowness of the elite that results fro this restriction insulates it from the influence of non-managerial social and political forces and reduces their ability to gain positions within the elite fro which they can moderate, balance or restrain its commands. Their exclusion from the elite contributes to the frustration of their aspirations and interests and encourages their alienation from the conflict with the elite and the destabilization and weakening of the regime.”
― Samuel T Francis, Leviathan and Its Enemies

“Post-bourgeois groups manifest hostility not only to the ideology of the soft managerial regime and to the psychic and behavioral patterns of its elite but also to the manipulative style of dominance that characterizes the elite and the tendency to acceleration on which the elite relies for the preservation and enhancement of its power. The managerial use of manipulation and acceleration not only alienates post-bourgeois groups culturally and morally but also threatens their economic position and social status.”
― Samuel T Francis, Leviathan and Its Enemies

“It is largely irrelevant whether the propertied elite acquires managerial skills, takes an active part in managing corporate enterprise, or has assimilated non-propertied elite manager into its own class and interests. What Mills and his disciple, William G. Domhoff and their school do not sufficiently perceive or appreciate thoroughly is that the interest of the propertied elite have changed substantially with the revolution of mass and scale. The propertied elite or “grand bourgeosie” of the bourgeois order may not have changed significantly in family composition, and certainly it retain wealth and status. Its economic interests, however, have changed from being vested in the hard property of privately owned and operated entrepreneurial firms, usually comparatively small in scale, to being intertwined with and dependent upon the de-materialized property of publicly owned, state-integrated, managerially operated mass corporations.”
― Samuel T. Francis, Leviathan and Its Enemies: Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America